


The Poison Queen

by mintpearlvoice



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Poisoning, Political Expediency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 18:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15847020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: When Jude is poisoned by an enemy, Cardan insists on nursing her back to health.





	The Poison Queen

A month passes, and I’m so tired. No matter how much I sleep, I still want to crawl back into my bed. At the end of the day, I’m too exhausted to wash or undress. Food doesn’t seem tasty anymore; things that I used to love cause my stomach to roll. When my hand cramps and spasms, fingers straightening rigid in the middle of practicing with my sword, I’m concerned.

Then, in the middle of a court dinner with representatives from several kingdoms, where I’m seated at the high table… then it happens.

The ballroom spins around me, each candle as bright as a sun. My body jerks and twitches as if someone else is pulling my strings. I’m frantic, desperate, as I try to bring whatever this is under control. Instead I’m a prisoner in my own skin, agony flaring through me as I tumble from my chair, head cracking against the floor.

“Is she all right?”

“The High Consort-“

So many voices. I can’t process it, can’t handle it.

Convulsions rip through me. When they pass, I’m left shaking on the floor. Everyone is watching, but I just want to sleep.

“Jude!” Cardan runs to my side, skidding to a kneeling halt. “Can you stand?”

I try, but my limbs disobey. How weak must I look in front of everyone? I hate this. So much.

“Don’t try to walk. Here, I’ll carry you-“

I’ve lost weight recently. My stomach hurts so much, it’s hard to eat. Even so, I’m still a normal mortal girl. But he lifts me like I’m made of paper and air.

Each step jars me like a beating. An oaken staff slamming into my back. Scream or faint, and my body chooses the latter in a dizzying blur.

 

When I wake up, I’m on a soft bed somewhere dark and cool, a velvet blanket under my cheek. I know that smell. It makes me relax despite myself, despite everything.

I’m in Cardan’s bed.

“Jude, Jude,” he whispers, voice cracking like dry autumn leaves. This is what he wrote over and over, tearing the paper: my name. Begging for me to notice him. Begging for me to get out of his head.

The noise hurts my ears. My head pounds. My body is falling apart, and everything just makes him worse.

But I can’t send him away. I don’t want to die alone.

I’m hauled into a sitting position. He presses a cup against my lips. “Jude, I need you to drink.” The smell makes my guts twist, an invisible knife. Overwhelming pain battering my body in endless waves. There’s nothing left to bring up, but I gag.

“Jude, damn you-“ He pinches my nose. Fuck! I try to lash out at him. But my joints feel like they’re dislocating with every effort at movement, and when I finally open my mouth to gasp for air, he pours the disgusting green slop down. It tastes like mud and twigs. I retch again and again, trying to clear the taste from my mouth.

The room is so dark. Where is he?

Then his hand is in my hair, guiding me to lean back against a pile of pillows. Pure silk. “It’s all right, Jude,” he whispers, tracing my ear with a fingertip. His touch is delicate, as if I might break. “You were so brave for me… that’s the antidote. You got through the worst of it. I won’t let you die, I promise- Jude-“

We’re experts at hiding our pain, Cardan and I. We let no one see our fear, our anger, our despair. Not even each other. But as the blankets shift under the warm weight of his body, I know he weeps.  

 

Time passes. The world fades in and out around me. My body is too heavy to move, too cold, too weak. Over and over I wake from nightmares of being stabbed, muscles spasming as pain rips right through me. I curl up as small as I can, my arms wrapped around my stomach as if to ward off the blows from within.

Every so often I think I’m better. I try to stand up.

I’m always wrong.

Lucidity and agony come and go. But there’s one constant: Cardan’s always there. His solid warmth wrapped around me when the chills come like a midwinter blizzard. A washcloth sweeping over my face when I can’t stand how disgusting and sweat-soaked I am. Berry crumble fresh from the ovens, soft in my mouth: “Jude, you damn fragile mortal, you have to eat.”

When the spasms start again, my arms and legs jerk so violently they fling off the covers. I can’t even snatch a breath. My chest is too tight.

“Jude.” For the first time, I see real fear in his eyes as he kneels beside the bed. “Look at me. Please.”

My neck is too stiff to turn, but I force myself to meet his gaze.

“I’ve loved you since… I don’t even remember how many years. I had a version of you I carried around in my head. Someone who was strong and brave and kind. Someone who would protect me from my brother. Who would shield every place where I was weak. The real you, though…”

My jaw’s locked, muscles in my face twitching wildly. I must look ridiculous. Still, the question comes out in my eyes.

“You are ruthless and cruel and a monster. And you have undone me utterly. My kingmaker, my murderer, my Jude. I would kneel at your feet for the full span of your mortal years… I would be yours and nothing else, if you would have me. If you would live.”

I have never seen him so utterly vulnerable. He’s in his shirtsleeves, a silk brocade shawl slung carelessly across his lean body, but he might as well have just stripped.

I can see inside his soul.

I hold a blade of iron in one hand and his heart in the other. I want to hurt him so badly that mine are the only marks scarring his body. I want to hold him until he buries his head in my shoulder as if I’m the only safe place in the world.

But I can’t make my drained limbs move. Instead I fight as hard as I can for a single breath and part my dry lips: “Promise?”

“I swear it by your brother’s crown.”

I close my eyes and let myself sleep.

After that, I grow stronger. In a week I walk around the room on Cardan’s arm. He brings me the hands of the poisoner and his allies, arranged in a macabre bouquet.  A month, and I once again wield my sword.

We’re sitting in the gardens when he breaks the news to me. “Your spy friends and I found it out. One of the kingdoms that believed they’d be free of a High King’s rule, and thought poisoning you was the safest way to weaken my standing.”

I frown up at him. “How was I poisoned?”

“It was in the wicks of your candles, the ones your servants lit at night. They must have known how hard you worked.” He describes the symptoms of a rare poison, something that’s dangerous only to humans and would give faeries a mild headache at most.

In response, I just shrug. “I’m too strong for them. Even if I didn’t have an immunity to that poison, my body’s tougher than most.”

He nods, and the gratitude in relief in his eyes are as blatant as an unsheathed sword. I smile back. But not because I’m happy to be alive.

I’m smiling because I won.

Seeing a possible threat to Cardan’s rule- and thus, Oak’s future kingship- in the form of this rebellious kingdom, I made sure representatives from that kingdom knew how I worked late into the night in a room lit only by candles. I then disguised myself as a human poisoner and sold the instrument of my own destruction to my enemies.

And I timed my doses so that I would collapse in full view of Cardan and the court, with plenty of time for an antidote to be obtained.

I was never in danger of dying. I just needed him to think I was.  

When he took the throne, I asked myself: what was Cardan’s weakness? How could I control him?

The answer was obvious.

Me.

Seven more years of ruling with my wicked king as a figurehead, and a lifetime in the shadows to protect my brother’s crown. But when I sprawl across the bench to rest my head on Cardan’s lap, for a moment I can close my eyes. He traces the curve of my ears, and I can breathe.

There is one person in this kingdom who needs me alive.

 

 


End file.
